11.15.24 Full Moon
I stood alone in the corridor. My chest was heavy and my throat burned as the tears began to fall. Overwhelming anxiety pierced my soul as I noticed a figure slowly making its way toward me. At first glance, it seemed like a white woman in hospital scrubs, pushing a cart. I blinked away the tears, trying to focus. I relaxed a bit when I realized her skin was smooth and brown. I needed to pull myself together, grounding my feet against the swell of emotion threatening to take me under. This was a hospital—she must have seen countless people cry alone. Maybe she would just pass by.
I wiped my face with my sleeves, taking a deep breath to steady myself.
The lights in the hallway flickered, casting shadows that danced with a life of their own. The very air felt charged, thick with something unseen. The hair on my arms stood on end as my breathing quickened. With each flicker, the lights dimmed further, as if the darkness itself was swallowing them whole. I felt an urge to run back to the room where my family waited, but I couldn’t move. My feet were glued to the spot—no, held in place by something invisible, something stronger than fear alone.
I glanced back for the old woman I had seen earlier, seeking a shred of comfort, but she was gone. Had I imagined her? A wave of unease swept over me. I scolded myself for not telling my mother I might need glasses, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t my vision that was failing. It was reality itself that often seemed to blur and bend.
The figure drew closer, and as it did, I realized my eyes were playing tricks on me—or perhaps something far deeper was at work. The shape began to shift, like a ripple in water disturbed by an unseen hand. The face morphed from male to female, young to old, the hair shifting from long to short, black to blonde, gray to brown. It was as if I was staring at the faces of many, layered one over the other, flickering like a faulty projection.
My chest tightened. This was no ordinary figure—it was something that defied explanation, something that shouldn’t exist in the realm of the living.
Fear gripped me as the figure came even closer. I couldn’t tell if I was paralyzed by terror, or if some other force held me captive, pulling strings I couldn’t see. The boundary between light and shadow seemed to blur, and I felt as though I had stepped into a space where the veil between worlds was thin—too thin. The figure stopped inches away, and the lights dimmed to near darkness. I could no longer make out the color of its skin; it seemed to merge with the shadows. But the eyes—oh, the eyes—glowed a faint, neon yellow, highlighting what should have been the whites, but were instead a deep, unsettling brown.
The man smiled, revealing teeth that were strangely perfect—shiny and straight, almost too symmetrical. I felt a flicker of relief, grasping for some sign that maybe this wasn’t what it seemed. Maybe he wasn’t here to hurt me. I didn’t want to offend him with my fear, and besides, I couldn’t run even if I wanted to. So, I smiled back, a thin, trembling gesture of false courage.
The man held my gaze for what felt like an eternity. I took a step back, but he moved forward.
“Relax,” he said, his voice soft but laced with an echo that didn’t belong. “I’m not going to physically hurt you. But I need you. I need you to carry out my plan. I must take you through things that will shatter your understanding, shake the very foundation you stand on. It will twist your reason for being until you no longer recognize yourself.”
His words washed over me like ice water. I wanted to run, to scream, but I was rooted in place, my mind reeling. Fear curled in my stomach, burning in my throat. I felt faint, yet I couldn’t look away. I stood there, staring into the eyes of what I perceived as a monster—eye to eye with something that shouldn’t exist, something that had stepped through the veil.
And in that moment, I realized: this was only the beginning.
-Illuminated Noire
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